Vikings and Hot Chocolate

Today was our last full day in Greenland. We traveled through a beautiful fjord, eventually reaching the town of Sarfannguit. Sarfannguit is a settlement in the Qeqqata municipality in central-western Greenland that was founded in 1843. This town is the embodiment of small town life, as its population was only 126 as of 2010. The community here is made up of those colorful houses I love as well as a small fish plant. 

Arriving in Sarfannguit, taken from the ship's balcony.

An abandoned building shows the speed limit for fishing boats in the area.

Houses along the rocky hillside. It's a miracle they don't fall down into the ocean below!

Cruising around the shoreline, all I could think about was how does someone even get to this location to develop a settlement? Even now, all supplies are brought in on boats. Not even airplanes can fly here. It is truly remote, and is one of the few places that has access to two fjords. Usually, a piece of land separates one fjord from the other but that is not the case with the small town of Sarfannguit.

Cruising along the shoreline of Sarfannguit.

As the wind started to pick up, we made our way to the other fjord. As we got close, we saw a small boat hidden between the rocks. As it turns out, it was a zodiac from our ship with "Vikings" who were handing out hot chocolate! The same thing happened to us in Antarctica when it was cold, so I've now had hot chocolate at both ends of the world!

Crew members hand out hot chocolate.

Eventually, it was time to cruise across the jelly fish infested waters back to the ship. While the jellies were pretty to look at, it's not a great sign for the environment. Apparently, jellyfish arrive when all other marine life in the area starts to die. The marine biologists took the ROV cam down to the seafloor and saw sediment covering presumably dead animals. Not to mention, the ROV cam showed the hundreds of thousands of jellyfish in the fjord.

Our ship, the National Geographic Explorer.

That's all for now... Stay tuned for more Greenland/Iceland/Canadian High Arctic adventures. Also, be sure to hit the subscribe button to be notified of new posts, as there is sometimes unreliable internet! Follow my instagram @elissatitle for more photography posts.